The USN Swimming team took on Father Ryan and Pope John Paul II in a double dual meet on Wednesday night at Tennessee State University’s Gentry Center pool. In a double dual meet, three teams compete all together but are scored as traditional two-team dual meets. With three of our best swimmers tapering for some championship USA swimming meets, we anticipated this would be a close night, and it lived up to our expectations in several ways.
The USN boys earned wins over JP2 (128-38) and Father Ryan (96-80), while the girls fell to both JP2 (130-39) and Father Ryan (105-61). This left our combined team with two close combined losses (185-157 to Father Ryan, and 168-167 to JP2).
Ben Tattersfield, who won both the 50 and 100 freestyles, led the boys’ team. Both races were particularly close; in the 50, Ben won by .03 seconds over a Father Ryan sprinter, and in the 100, he finished just .07 ahead of our own Daniel Pannock. Daniel and Ben both posted in-season best times in the 100, and Daniel earned an individual win of his own in the 100 backstroke. Kellon Patey added a win in the 500 freestyle and joined Ben and Daniel (along with Neil Zheng) for a strong swim to win the 400 freestyle relay and put a nice punctuation mark on the meet. The boys’ 200 medley relay (Daniel, Will Jones, Neil, Ben) also won
Other standout swims came from Mitchell Coverstone, who dropped two seconds in his 100 breaststroke; Dylan Young, who showed great range in being able to have good speed our relays and a strong swim in his 500 freestyle; Tebyn Chittester, who earned his first Region cut of the season; and John “Spence” Spence, who swam a lifetime best in the 100 freestyle and anchored the 200 freestyle relay in his fastest 50 ever.
Although the girls team wasn’t able to emerge victorious as a team, we saw some strong performances from a number of swimmers. Trudy Zou continues to improve across the board, swimming lifetime bests in the 50 backstroke leading off our 200 medley relay, the 200 IM, and the 100 breaststroke. Her 100 breaststroke was a new State qualifying time and moved her up to 9th on the USN all-time Top 10 list. The biggest improvement of the entire night came from Renata Aguilar, dropped 10 seconds in her 100 freestyle and 3.5 seconds in her 100 backstroke. Daisy Rudin, Puja Jagasia, and newcomer Sophia Navarre also had lifetime best times and raced quite well in new events.
Our swimmers of the meet were Trudy Zou, Renata Aguilar, Daniel Pannock, and Ben Tattersfield, each of whom had several strong races and swam multiple season bests.
The team turns away from competing for a while to focus on exams and training. We resume competition on January 8 in a dual meet against Brentwood Academy and will have the Excel Invitational later that week as well. The team carries 9 State qualifiers and 23 Region qualifiers into January, and we’re excited for the best performances of the season still to come.